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The Recruitment of Maltese Translators at the EU - Part 3

In the previous part we
have seen how the European Parliament lacks transparency regarding its staff
and how it doesn’t wish to reveal who it employs. Now we shall see how the
European Commission has in the past made some dubious decisions regarding its staffing
policy. As was already described in Part 1, nearly every Maltese-speaking
person could join the Commission as a translator in 2004, because there was a
shortage of staff. The situation changed in 2017, when suddenly more
translators were placed on the reserve list than were actually needed.

Reserve lists are a
highly debated issue. Being successful in an EPSO competition doesn’t guarantee
a legal right to employment. Some people spend years on a reserve list and are
never recruited. Legally, a European institution may recruit anyone it likes
and isn’t obliged to revert to successful candidates on a reserve list. One of
the many blogs criticising EPSO can be found here https://www.facebook.com/EU.careers#!/EU.careers/info.

It is true that thousands of laureates are
found on reserve lists. But the position of a Maltese translator is very
specific in nature, and therefore DGT can only recruit from a limited amount of
reserve lists. After the conclusion of the last concours prior to the one of
2017 (which was in 2014), the Commission still recruited many new translators
and administrators who hadn’t been successful in that competition. But what
would happen to these so-called temporary translators who weren’t successful in
the 2017 competition?

First, we started by asking the Commission
how many Maltese translators within the Maltese (MT) department were on a
temporary contract. In January 2018 9 translators were temporary. We then went
on to ask the director of the directorate about the recruitment policy
the directorate would adopt and whether contracts of unsuccessful candidates
would be extended given that the reserve list wasn’t yet exhausted.

However, the director (Klaus Meyer-Koeken)
felt that it’s no one’s business how the Commission recruits its staff and
replied “DGT does not disclose to third parties any information on the
decisions regarding the staffing of its Language Departments and other services
(officials and contractual staff) or on individual staff members.” (please note
that at this stage no questions were raised regarding individual staff members.)

After replying several times and after a
number of reminders, a certain Marika Papasideri (who seems to be the enforcer
of DGT) replied with a long but rather content-less email. She argued, inter
alia, that all translators do a good job and, surprise surprise, that certain
information cannot be shared due to data protection rules. Not one single name
was mentioned at this stage, so the latter argument can only be comprehended if
you’re as high as a kite. Several replies and reminders were sent, but, as in
the case of the European Parliament, peasants don’t deserve a reply. Unhappy
with this approach, a complaint was submitted to the European Ombudsman.

Peasants certainly is a harsh word but
failing to get an answer to legitimate yet uncomfortable questions is
frustrating. While the letter of the Commission was much more satisfactory than
that of the EP, it still left a lot of questions.

Moreover, due to the fact that the
Commission publishes its staff lists, it could be established that 3 temporary
translators who hadn’t been successful in the concours had left the Commission.
That would result in 6 temporary agents working within the MT department as
translators. Yet the letter sent indicated that the department now only
employed 2 temporary translators. As those numbers wouldn’t add up, questions
were once again sent to the Commission regarding these numbers.

Mr. Dirk Meert from Business Correspondence responded
that some of those previously
temporary translators were now probationary
officials.How exactly is that possible? Questions have been sent.